A forum poster at Chiphell has released benchmarks for a system featuring two anticipated next-gen products – AMD's Radeon HD 7770 and Intel's Ivy Bridge Core i5 3550K. The HD 7770 featured is the reference design – identical to the previous pictures leaked. While the i5 3550K is as much part of the system, the benchmarks performed are 3D Mark and reveal HD 7770's performance most.

A forum poster at Chiphell has released benchmarks for a system featuring two anticipated next-gen products – AMD's Radeon HD 7770 and Intel's Ivy Bridge Core i5 3550K. The HD 7770 featured is the reference design – identical to the previous pictures leaked. While the i5 3550K is as much part of the system, the benchmarks performed are 3D Mark and reveal HD 7770's performance most.

The system scores P3421 and X1077 in 3D Mark 11 using beta drivers. This puts HD 7770's performance well ahead of GTX 550 Ti and even HD 6790 and just under HD 6850. HD 7770 features the Cape Verde chip, with 896 SP or 14 CUs. Based on the GCN architecture, HD 7770 is DX11.1 and PCIe 3.0 compliant, and as we had previously seen, powered by a single 6-pin PCIe connector. The poster suggests a TDP as low as 90W-100W.

What we had not seen before is the reverse side of the PCB, which reveals 4 more memory modules. This suggests the HD 7770 might sport upto 2GB of GDDR5 memory – an unprecedented amount for a mainstream GPU. The memory will be tied to a 128-bit memory interface, clocked at 1.125 GHz. The core clock is a startling 1 GHz – the first commercial GPU to break the magic number in reference guise. The expected price is $150 with release in February 2012.

Meanwhile, the Core i5 3550K will succeed the popular Core i5 2500K in the >$200 market. It scores roughly 6500 in the 3D Mark 11 Physics test which stresses the CPU. This pegs it just ahead of FX-8150 and Core i5 2500K, while behind Core i7 2600K thanks to its lack of HyperThreading. However, actual games tend to be much less threaded than 3D Mark 11 so the Core i5 3550K will continue to be the best value for gaming. Recent reports point to a release on April 8th 2012.